- US DOJ sues to block ethics punishments of administration lawyers
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
“The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia Bar over its efforts to discipline Trump administration lawyers, escalating the department’s feud with legal ethics authorities. The lawsuit defends Jeffrey Clark, a government lawyer in the first Trump administration who sought to undo the results of the 2020 presidential race, and Ed Martin, a current senior Justice Department official. The suit was filed by Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Stanley E. Woodward Jr., the No. 3 official at the Justice Department…. The lawsuit centers on the long-running battle over the D.C. Bar’s effort to disbar Clark, an environmental lawyer who had no formal role in investigating elections, over his push to promote Trump’s baseless assertions of fraud in Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020.” (05/14/26)
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/nation/trump-administration-lawyers-ethics-bar-20260514.html
- Are Democrats Now the Party of Free Markets? Don’t Bet on It.
Source: Reason
by Stephanie Slade“Listening to two prominent progressives highlight the cronyism and inefficiencies of government bureaucracy that libertarians have been shouting about for decades was equal parts refreshing and infuriating. But if you were tempted to hope those realizations would bring them around to genuinely libertarian conclusions, you would be disappointed. Ultimately, as the second half of the podcast made clear, [Ezra] Klein and his allies support streamlining government because they hope to make it easier for government to do big, ambitious things: nationwide high-speed rail, federal housing projects, Medicare for All. They are not trying to get government out of the way so people can thrive; they want government itself to thrive. That distinction is the main problem with the hypothesis that Democrats will soon be the party of free markets and limited government.” (05/14/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/14/are-democrats-now-the-party-of-free-markets-dont-bet-on-it/
- “Nearest Nickel” Makes Sense … But Why a Law?
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“On May 11, a new law went into effect in Florida, ‘allowing’ businesses to round the amounts charged for cash purchases to the nearest nickel. Really? Nothing more important than this for our masters in Tallahassee to spend their time on? Don’t get me wrong. The practice in question makes sense …. But why on Earth would merchants need a law to ‘allow’ this? … Even when framed as ‘voluntary’ — as this one is — unnecessary laws ‘allowing’ behaviors already unquestionably ‘allowed’ (by common sense and conventional morality) tend to nudge the public toward an ‘everything not required is forbidden’ mindset in which we instinctively seek permission from our rulers for every action, trivial or momentous.” (05/14/26)
- Welfare-Warfare State Reform Is Not Freedom
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“The libertarian movement can be divided into two basic groups: libertarians who call for reforming welfare-warfare state programs and libertarians who call for dismantling welfare-warfare state programs. I fall within the latter group. Why? Because I want to be free. Reform doesn’t get me freedom. At best it gets me a better serfdom. That’s nice, but it’s not want I want for the rest of my life. I want to be free, and only by dismantling infringements on freedom can I attain genuine freedom.” (05/14/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/05/14/welfare-warfare-state-reform-is-not-freedom/
- When Killing Becomes Commonplace
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andrew P Napolitano“Last week, when the Pentagon resumed its attacks on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean, the media barely noticed. The U.S. military has now destroyed 56 vessels and killed 190 persons. The killings began in September 2025 and have continued to this month. … Killing survivors is expressly prohibited by federal law as well as by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. And, of course, ordering the killing of innocents is always unlawful. So, the Pentagon made two changes. It produced more lethal strikes so as not to be burdened with the problem of survivors, and it either stopped killing survivors or stopped revealing that it killed them.” (05/14/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2026/05/13/when-killing-becomes-commonplace/
- The “Trade Deficit” is a Misnomer
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy“The United States, like most other countries, use a method of double-entry accounting to track certain aggregate statistics known as National Income Accounting. One of the statistics tracked is the balance of trade. The balance of trade reports the difference between imports and exports. … The connotations of the words ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ (coupled with the accounting conventions of pluses and minus) give the impression to those who do not understand the balance of trade that deficits are bad while surpluses are good. But, digging a little into the accounting shows that 1) ‘deficits’ and ‘surpluses’ are value-free and 2) referring to these as ‘trade deficits/surpluses’ is something of a misnomer.” (05/14/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/the-trade-deficit-is-a-misnomer
- AOC’s war on billionaires twists America’s birth into a socialist myth
Source: Fox News Forum
by Jonathan Turley“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [D-NY] is fast becoming the greatest fabulist since Aesop. Recently, Ocasio-Cortez insisted that true billionaires are a capitalist myth since ‘you can’t earn a billion dollars.’ However, her greatest work of fiction may be her insistence that the Framers fought against billionaires and would have joined her and other socialists in seeking to eradicate them today. Bertrand Russell once noted that ‘there is something feeble and a little contemptible’ about those ‘who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.’ The American left has long peddled such ‘comfortable myths’ as the wealthy ‘not paying their fair share’ of taxes. The top 1% of income earners pay over 40% of federal taxes, and that percentage goes up to 70% for the top 10%.” (05/14/26)
- “The Library is One of the Best Libertarian Arguments for Limited Government”
Source: Washington Monthly
by David Masciotra“John Chrastka of EveryLibrary, which fights for library budgets and against book bans, discusses libraries, their central role in our society, censorship — and those drag-queen story hours.” (05/14/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/14/library-book-bans-limited-government/
- How Not to Measure AI Productivity
Source: The Daily Economy
by Walter Donway“Organizations often mistake measurable activity for meaningful achievement. AI productivity metrics confuse computation costs with added value.” (05/14/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/how-not-to-measure-ai-productivity/
- The Charity Trap
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mani Basharzad“One of the first attempts by the second Trump administration to cut government waste was massive cuts and layoffs at USAID. Now, the same administration is pressuring the United Nations to adopt more trade-focused policies rather than aid-focused ones — the ‘trade not aid’ strategy. While it is not obvious how Trump’s tariffs are helping poor nations through trade, we still need to rethink foreign aid.” (05/14/26)
- Ruth Lopez Spoke Up for Due Process; Now She’s Detained Without Charges
Source: Our Future
by Sulma Arias“Who of us has the right to live without fear? This is the question human rights lawyer Ruth Lopez has asked fearlessly in El Salvador — the country of my birth — for decades. It’s a question we all need to ask ourselves in the United States as well. For speaking boldly, Ruth is now in prison. She’s been held without trial since May 18, 2025 — now a year ago — when she was torn from her bed by police and arrested without any investigation or judicial warrant. Ruth has since had minimal contact with her family and lawyers. Ruth’s crime? She opposed corruption. When Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele signed a secret agreement with the Trump administration to accept $4.7 million for the illegal transfer of more than 200 U.S. deportees to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, Ruth spoke up to defend their basic rights.” (05/14/26)
https://ourfuture.org/20260514/ruth-lopez-spoke-up-for-due-process-now-shes-detained-without-charges
- Try Liberty with Steven Nekhaila, 05/14/26
Source: Try Liberty with Steven Nekhaila
“When the Primary Source Disappears, So Does the Truth | Ford Fischer.” (05/14/26)
- The Libertarian Angle, 05/14/26
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The Folly of Trump’s Trade Summit in China.” (05/15/26)